The Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy (25+ Works with active table of contents) (523 page)

The fact that the tramp of feet, the screams and abuse of the criminals, reached them through the wall, reminding them of their surroundings, seemed only to increase the sense of coziness. As on an island in the midst of the sea, these people felt themselves for a brief interval not swamped by the degradation and sufferings which surrounded them; this made their spirits rise, and excited them. They talked about everything except their present position and that which awaited them. Then, as it generally happens among young men, and women especially, if they are forced to remain together, as these people were, all sorts of agreements and disagreements and attractions, curiously blended, had sprung up among them. Almost all of them were in love. Novodvoroff was in love with the pretty, smiling Grabetz. This Grabetz was a young, thoughtless girl who had gone in for a course of study, perfectly indifferent to revolutionary questions, but succumbing to the influence of the day, she compromised herself in some way and was exiled. The chief interest of her life during the time of her trial in prison and in exile was her success with men, just as it had been when she was free. Now on the way she comforted herself with the fact that Novodvoroff had taken a fancy to her, and she fell in love with him. Vera Doukhova, who was very prone to fall in love herself, but did not awaken love in others, though she was always hoping for mutual love, was sometimes drawn to Nabatoff, then to Novodvoroff. Kryltzoff felt something like love for Mary Pavlovna. He loved her with a man's love, but knowing how she regarded this sort of love, hid his feelings under the guise of friendship and gratitude for the tenderness with which she attended to his wants. Nabatoff and Rintzeva were attached to each other by very complicated ties. Just as Mary Pavlovna was a perfectly chaste maiden, in the same way Rintzeva was perfectly chaste as her own husband's wife. When only a schoolgirl of sixteen she fell in love with Rintzeff, a student of the Petersburg University, and married him before he left the university, when she was only nineteen years old. During his fourth year at the university her husband had become involved in the students' rows, was exiled from Petersburg, and turned revolutionist. She left the medical courses she was attending, followed him, and also turned revolutionist. If she had not considered her husband the cleverest and best of men she would not have fallen in love with him; and if she had not fallen in love would not have married; but having fallen in love and married him whom she thought the best and cleverest of men, she naturally looked upon life and its aims in the way the best and cleverest of men looked at them. At first he thought the aim of life was to learn, and she looked upon study as the aim of life. He became a revolutionist, and so did she. She could demonstrate very clearly that the existing state of things could not go on, and that it was everybody's duty to fight this state of things and to try to bring about conditions in which the individual could develop freely, etc. And she imagined that she really thought and felt all this, but in reality she only regarded everything her husband thought as absolute truth, and only sought for perfect agreement, perfect identification of her own soul with his which alone could give her full moral satisfaction. The parting with her husband and their child, whom her mother had taken, was very hard to bear; but she bore it firmly and quietly, since it was for her husband's sake and for that cause which she had not the slightest doubt was true, since he served it. She was always with her husband in thoughts, and did not love and could not love any other any more than she had done before. But Nabatoff's devoted and pure love touched and excited her. This moral, firm man, her husband's friend, tried to treat her as a sister, but something more appeared in his behaviour to her, and this something frightened them both, and yet gave colour to their life of hardship.

So that in all this circle only Mary Pavlovna and Kondratieff were quite free from love affairs.

CHAPTER XIV

.

CONVERSATIONS IN PRISON.

Expecting to have a private talk with Katusha, as usual, after tea, Nekhludoff sat by the side of Kryltzoff, conversing with him. Among other things he told him the story of Makar's crime and about his request to him. Kryltzoff listened attentively, gazing at Nekhludoff with glistening eyes.

"Yes," said Kryltzoff suddenly, "I often think that here we are going side by side with them, and who are they? The same for whose sake we are going, and yet we not only do not know them, but do not even wish to know them. And they, even worse than that, they hate us and look upon us as enemies. This is terrible."

"There is nothing terrible about it," broke in Novodvoroff. "The masses always worship power only. The government is in power, and they worship it and hate us. To-morrow we shall have the power, and they will worship us," he said with his grating voice. At that moment a volley of abuse and the rattle of chains sounded from behind the wall, something was heard thumping against it and screaming and shrieking, some one was being beaten, and some one was calling out, "Murder! help!"

"Hear them, the beasts! What intercourse can there be between us and such as them?" quietly remarked Novodvoroff.

"You call them beasts, and Nekhludoff was just telling me about such an action!" irritably retorted Kryltzoff, and went on to say how Makar was risking his life to save a fellow-villager. "That is not the action of a beast, it is heroism."

"Sentimentality!" Novodvoroff ejaculated ironically; "it is difficult for us to understand the emotions of these people and the motives on which they act. You see generosity in the act, and it may be simply jealousy of that other criminal."

"How is it that you never wish to see anything good in another?" Mary Pavlovna said suddenly, flaring up.

"How can one see what does not exist!"

"How does it not exist, when a man risks dying a terrible death?"

"I think," said Novodvoroff, "that if we mean to do our work, the first condition is that" (here Kondratieff put down the book he was reading by the lamplight and began to listen attentively to his master's words) "we should not give way to fancy, but look at things as they are. We should do all in our power for the masses, and expect nothing in return. The masses can only be the object of our activity, but cannot be our fellow-workers as long as they remain in that state of inertia they are in at present," he went on, as if delivering a lecture. "Therefore, to expect help from them before the process of development--that process which we are preparing them for--has taken place is an illusion."

"What process of development?" Kryltzoff began, flushing all over. "We say that we are against arbitrary rule and despotism, and is this not the most awful despotism?"

"No despotism whatever," quietly rejoined Novodvoroff. "I am only saying that I know the path that the people must travel, and can show them that path."

"But how can you be sure that the path you show is the true path? Is this not the same kind of despotism that lay at the bottom of the Inquisition, all persecutions, and the great revolution? They, too, knew the one true way, by means of their science."

"Their having erred is no proof of my going to err; besides, there is a great difference between the ravings of idealogues and the facts based on sound, economic science." Novodvoroff's voice filled the room; he alone was speaking, all the rest were silent.

"They are always disputing," Mary Pavlovna said, when there was a moment's silence.

"And you yourself, what do you think about it?" Nekhludoff asked her.

"I think Kryltzoff is right when he says we should not force our views on the people."

"And you, Katusha?" asked Nekhludoff with a smile, waiting anxiously for her answer, fearing she would say something awkward.

"I think the common people are wronged," she said, and blushed scarlet. "I think they are dreadfully wronged."

"That's right, Maslova, quite right," cried Nabatoff. "They are terribly wronged, the people, and they must not he wronged, and therein lies the whole of our task."

"A curious idea of the object of revolution," Novodvoroff remarked crossly, and began to smoke.

"I cannot talk to him," said Kryltzoff in a whisper, and was silent.

"And it is much better not to talk," Nekhludoff said.

CHAPTER XV

.

NOVODVOROFF.

Although Novodvoroff was highly esteemed of all the revolutionists, though he was very learned, and considered very wise, Nekhludoff reckoned him among those of the revolutionists who, being below the average moral level, were very far below it. His inner life was of a nature directly opposite to that of Simonson's. Simonson was one of those people (of an essentially masculine type) whose actions follow the dictates of their reason, and are determined by it. Novodvoroff belonged, on the contrary, to the class of people of a feminine type, whose reason is directed partly towards the attainment of aims set by their feelings, partly to the justification of acts suggested by their feelings. The whole of Novodvoroff's revolutionary activity, though he could explain it very eloquently and very convincingly, appeared to Nekhludoff to be founded on nothing but ambition and the desire for supremacy. At first his capacity for assimilating the thoughts of others, and of expressing them correctly, had given him a position of supremacy among pupils and teachers in the gymnasium and the university, where qualities such as his are highly prized, and he was satisfied. When he had finished his studies and received his diploma he suddenly altered his views, and from a modern liberal he turned into a rabid Narodovoletz, in order (so Kryltzoff, who did not like him, said) to gain supremacy in another sphere.

As he was devoid of those moral and aesthetic qualities which call forth doubts and hesitation, he very soon acquired a position in the revolutionary world which satisfied him--that of the leader of a party. Having once chosen a direction, he never doubted or hesitated, and was therefore certain that he never made a mistake. Everything seemed quite simple, clear and certain. And the narrowness and one-sidedness of his views did make everything seem simple and clear. One only had to be logical, as he said. His self-assurance was so great that it either repelled people or made them submit to him. As he carried on his work among very young people, his boundless self-assurance led them to believe him very profound and wise; the majority did submit to him, and he had a great success in revolutionary circles. His activity was directed to the preparation of a rising in which he was to usurp the power and call together a council. A programme, composed by him, should he proposed before the council, and he felt sure that this programme of his solved every problem, and that it would he impossible not to carry it out.

His comrades respected but did not love him. He did not love any one, looked upon all men of note as upon rivals, and would have willingly treated them as old male monkeys treat young ones if he could have done it. He would have torn all mental power, every capacity, from other men, so that they should not interfere with the display of his talents. He behaved well only to those who bowed before him. Now, on the journey he behaved well to Kondratieff, who was influenced by his propaganda; to Vera Doukhova and pretty little Grabetz, who were both in love with him. Although in principle he was in favour of the woman's movement, yet in the depth of his soul he considered all women stupid and insignificant except those whom he was sentimentally in love with (as he was now in love with Grabetz), and such women he considered to be exceptions, whose merits he alone was capable of discerning.

The question of the relations of the sexes he also looked upon as thoroughly solved by accepting free union. He had one nominal and one real wife, from both of whom he was separated, having come to the conclusion that there was no real love between them, and now he thought of entering on a free union with Grabetz. He despised Nekhludoff for "playing the fool," as Novodvoroff termed it, with Maslova, but especially for the freedom Nekhludoff took of considering the defects of the existing system and the methods of correcting those defects in a manner which was not only not exactly the same as Novodvoroff's, but was Nekhludoff's own--a prince's, that is, a fool's manner. Nekhludoff felt this relation of Novodvoroff's towards him, and knew to his sorrow that in spite of the state of good will in which he found himself on this journey he could not help paying this man in his own coin, and could not stifle the strong antipathy he felt for him.

CHAPTER XVI

.

SIMONSON SPEAKS TO NEKHLUDOFF.

The voices of officials sounded from the next room. All the prisoners were silent, and a sergeant, followed by two convoy soldiers, entered. The time of the inspection had come. The sergeant counted every one, and when Nekhludoff's turn came he addressed him with kindly familiarity.

"You must not stay any longer, Prince, after the inspection; you must go now."

Nekhludoff knew what this meant, went up to the sergeant and shoved a three-rouble note into his hand.

"Ah, well, what is one to do with you; stay a bit longer, if you like." The sergeant was about to go when another sergeant, followed by a convict, a spare man with a thin beard and a bruise under his eye, came in.